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Addressing The Skull Merchant
As ever, Adriana is a hot topic on the forum lately, and I figured I'd throw my hat into the ring talking about what I think her problems actually are, and how I'd go about addressing them. There are a number of things in this post that I want to address, but most of them are relatively minor, and I'll be explaining why I think each change would be a good one as we go.
1: Hacking a drone should remove a stack of Lock On. This would be a good idea for a few reasons, in my opinion, but the two biggest ones are the following: It emphasises her current counterplay and makes it feel both more approachable and more impactful, much like the nerf NOED got in 6.1.0., and it also allows us to maintain one of the more interesting bits of skill expression in Skull Merchant's kit - the ability to place semi-hidden drones that can actually surprise survivors with unexpected scans - without rewarding the killer too much for not being there to follow up on it. So, one hack would equal minus one stack, allowing you to correct for a drone you didn't see coming if you go disable it immediately and allowing you to reset properly if you manage to evade the killer.
2: Either add a cooldown to changing rotation direction, or more ideally, add a tell. The ability to change the beam's direction is a welcome addition that adds some complexity and skill expression, but I do feel it's a little on the free side and it can be spammed a little too much until it just takes survivors off guard. A short cooldown in the five-to-ten second range would be one way of addressing this, but making the drone just beep in confirmation so the survivor knows to adjust (if they have room to) would probably be more fair.
3: Overlapping drones should be... adjusted? I don't think drones being able to overlap is itself problematic, and I think a degree of that is probably necessary to ensure the power doesn't feel too clunky to set down, but it's definitely too possible to overlap the radius of multiple drones at the moment. Lessening that is something I could see being a good idea, though to what degree I'm not sure.
4: Remove Deep Wound from her kit. For the most part, complaints about how many status effects Skull Merchant has don't really hold much water, but I do feel like the Deep Wound specifically is kind of unnecessary and tacked-on compared to the rest of her kit. The temptation may be to defend it with the idea that a damaging power should do something if it hits an injured survivor, but the counter to that would be that the claw trap does do something, it applies Broken and allows for the application of Hindered. This particular status effect is arbitrary and unnecessary, so I think it should go.
5: Drones should stay hacked for longer, but should be more easily discernible for the killer. There's a particular criticism that goes around, to the tune of "hacking drones is ineffective because she can just instantly replace it", but that's not really a fair criticism because in a lot of ways, that's the point. Skull Merchant being forced to go out of her way and re-apply a drone, losing out on the ability to gain stacks from it until after it's armed, is a net benefit for the survivor by a fairly noticeable margin.
However, I do think that the current timer means it can feel a little underwhelming even if she doesn't come back to re-apply it. So, I think increasing the timer up to something like 90 seconds, but showing a hacked drone's aura in red (to differentiate between stealth mode's white and scouting mode's yellow), would allow hacking drones to feel (and be!) much more immediately impactful while still enabling and even encouraging the current interaction of forcing the killer to go replace them, as well as allowing the killer to bank on that drone still being there and reactivated much later if they don't feel like it's worth it in the moment.
6: More feedback when you're tracked. I saw this idea elsewhere and I quite like it- if the Skull Merchant can see you on her radar, your Lock On portrait thing should turn red. This will allow players to better gauge whether she has Haste and how safe they should play, without fully removing the benefits of having that Haste to begin with. It'll also clue newer players in not to try and hide while they're scanned...
(Also, to be honest, I think there should be visual tells for every Haste source in the game, but that's a different topic.)
7: Finally, give her a training wheels addon. Nothing major and certainly not something any of her detractors would care about, but it'd be nice to get a bit of a training wheels addon that shows the beams in white for a few seconds after placing down a drone, so you get some immediate feedback on whether you positioned it correctly. Precise aim is pretty important for good drone placement in a lot of scenarios, so something like this would be useful for players trying to learn it. Replace the Adi Valente Issue 1 addon with it, that's a brown and it's kinda worthless.
--
My goal with these changes is not to appease Skull Merchant's haters. The degree to which she's hated is irrational and no amount of good-sense changes would address that. My goal is, though, to make her the healthiest and skill expressive as she can be for both sides, and I think these changes would go a long way towards addressing that.
I am curious what others think, but I'm not holding my breath for particularly constructive feedback. Hopefully, this'll reach the devs alongside (or preferably over) some of the more... aggressive and opinionated, shall we say, posts about her.
Comments
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She's fine. The visibility of the scan lines helps way more playing versus her than I thought they would. This is death by a thousand cuts.
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Well, not all of these are nerfs, to be fair.
Still, I disagree, while I do love playing her and on the rare occasion I see her I do also like playing against her, I think she needs a few tweaks to be as healthy as she can be.
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I don't think a B tier killer when people actually choose to play vs her needs a suite of nerfs regardless of how much people dislike her. It's not like she's nurse, blight or even Chucky level.
Also being able to tell when drones are disabled is hardly even a buff, it's a quality of life. You can already tell because the rotation option is disabled.
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Nerfs aren't always about how strong something is. Sometimes it's about how healthy that thing is.
I, personally, think SM has crazy potential if played right (and if people don't choose to give up). Changes are inevitable because of her reputation, so I'd rather exert the tiny influence I have towards those nerfs being sensible and healthy rather than being an indiscriminate sledgehammer.
There are buffs she could fairly get too, if these end up being too much all at once, but I don't personally think they would be. Most of them won't even be noticeable in the course of regular play-- take the removal of Deep Wound. How often do you actually bank on or play around the Deep Wound specifically when it comes to her drones? Basically never, it's the injure/Broken/Hindered that actually matter.
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don't bother trying appease d/c survivors. there was very little feedback on her until BVHR showcases kill-statistics. only than was there a natural barrage of posts to change her.
1: Hacking a drone should remove a stack of Lock On.
This is bad idea because it actively punishes skull merchant for using the ability outside of chase. Every drone becomes a lock-on removal station. You are no longer punished for misplaying and encouraged to 3 gen with drones because leaving your drones out becomes a drawback. Defending your drones becomes only way to remove the drawback. Examining the 50 minute skull merchant match should explain why this is not a good idea. The killer needs to be able to progressively win in a 3 gen. Not have an endless stalemate.
There is real no reason any survivor get any lock-on stacks outside of chase because you can see drones turning even when drone is in stealth mode. Stealth mode is almost pointless to anyone that is half alert. The only drones that have any merit to gaining lock-on stacks are drones where you turn a corner and your recklessly running. This is also easy to counter because you can use your third person camera around corners and even micro crouch for 1-2 seconds to avoid beams when turning corners.
2: Either add a cooldown to changing rotation direction, or more ideally, add a tell.
This removes one of skill-caps for applying lock-on stacks quickly in a chase. The change does absolutely nothing for bad skull merchants and only affects skull merchants that 100% optimize her kit with time efficiency. This character already has low skill-floor, so removing this mechanic makes skill floor = skill-ceiling in 1vs1 micro chase. Most survivors play play poorly in the chase that they often go down before getting 3 stacks of lock-on.
4: Remove Deep Wound from her kit.
Only affects dead hard users and technically buffs Made for this users. You can use this to camp hooks with overlapping drones and deep wound ignoring BT to tunnel, At the same time, Off the record does exist and with 90 second window, you can micro crouch her drones which forces killer to hit you.
7: Finally, give her a training wheels addon.
She already has one. They nerfed her Low power mode cooldown for this useless effect where your drones stand still. Makes your drones worse and they become auto-pilot.
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So, in order--
1: You're right in what you're saying, but the reason for this change lays in what you're not acknowledging, which is the cracked Skull Merchant drone positions where the survivors don't have a tell due to the stealth-mode ring being hidden and sometimes have a hard time getting to the drone to disarm it without getting scanned. I don't want to remove those because I think they're very cool, but I do want the Skull Merchant not to be able to just cheese out a war of attrition with them either.
If getting scanned outside of chase was always 100% avoidable and the survivor's fault, sure, but there is currently skill expression in her kit that allows for that not being the case. I don't want that taken away, so I want it to be something you have to actively capitalise on instead.
Though, I don't think this change would encourage 3-genning at all, especially since SM can't really do that all that well anymore. What it'd encourage is committing to getting three scans in a chase, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe add some kind of grace period where if they get a scan in chase they can't remove it for a while, or maybe they can't remove it while they're shown on SM's scanner, but that part feels like it might be over-complicated.
2: That's why I prefer a tell over a cooldown. I'd like both sides to be able to express their skill, and while you can keep track of a drone's rotation by looking at it constantly, I'd like to make that slightly easier to do. Most survivors don't bother even looking behind them in chase, so this won't affect too many players, and the players it does affect get a more dynamic back-and-forth.
3: These seem like you're agreeing with me? Those are good reasons to remove the Deep Wound.
4: That's not a training wheels addon, it's just a gimmick addon. Like I said, the training wheels addon would show you the beams for a few seconds in white after setting the drone, so that you can better learn aim and timings with the normal effect of her power. It's also a yellow, and I don't like the idea of training wheels addons being higher than a brown, personally.
As an aside, it's not that bad. Static beams you play around is more of a sidegrade than the regular rotation. I don't like it, but I can see why some might.
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Hacking a drone should remove a stack of Lock On
So Skully gets punished for using her drones in advance and her drones are completely useless outside of chase....
Remove Deep Wound from her kit
It would be better to remove broken and just make it always deep wound, so new players are not so punished and forced to play injured.
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Not really? If she places them in advance, that means she's going to chase survivors towards them. If this punishes her for anything, it's starting a chase, getting a stack or two, and then dropping that chase. Setting them in advance has basically nothing to do with that.
As for the Deep Wound, removing the Broken is a way bigger nerf and not one I'm personally a fan of. Plague applies a permanent Broken and that's okay, Skull Merchant only applies it for 45 seconds by default. Sure, SM gets other effects too, but that's why hers is on a timer.
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Plague applies a permanent Broken and that's okay
Plague is not stealth killer.
Removing broken would not be big deal. You usually get there only in chase anyway unless survivors screwed it.
If survivors could remove lock on with disarm, that's why bigger nerf than just removing broken. You can never drop chase with survivor having lock on, because it's gone. It would be impossible to get claw trap outside of chase. Why would you care about missing broken, when you will get it only in chase anyway?
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I mean... should it be possible to get claw traps outside of chase?
It already isn't, functionally, with the only exceptions being survivors massively messing up and the crazy drone placements that hide the ring so survivors can't see it. One is a skill issue that would be absent against decent/aware players, and the other is kind of questionable considering it removes intentional counterplay.
I like those crazy drone placements, so I'd rather see them be counterable rather than remove them. They are the only time the killer can engineer claw traps outside of chase, after all, you should have to exercise some skill in getting there and in capitalising on it.
As to only getting Broken in chase - that at least makes dropping chase after the claw trap worth it, especially with hacking removing Lock On stacks. Dropping chase before getting the trap, even on live, is kind of a waste of your time. If all you got was an injure and Deep Wound, there'd be almost no benefit to ever dropping chase, she'd be a hyper-committal killer. I do want her to have to commit a little bit more than she currently does, but not that much.
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- We agree. We don't really have anything meaningful to add.
- We don't really have much of a opinion on this. We've seen 1 merchant trying to spam switch and that was in a kyf and didn't do much if anything.
- We believe that it should only be big enough for a survivor to be able to run through (the circles don't cross), but that's our thoughts. From what little we've seen though it looks to be ok currently.
- We think that the deep wounds is to be a semi counter to things like DH while procing things like MFT and add Abit more punishment for getting scanned while injured. We wouldn't see it as a problem if the stacks could be removed but either way we agree deep wounds could be removed and wouldn't affect much.
- We'd be ok with increasing the timer but don't think changing the color would do anything. Nice little qol though. We're not sure if 90 seconds is the number though, maybe 60-70 but a whole gens worth of time is abit much to our tastes.
- We disagree. Survivors shouldn't need more info on when she's tracking someone. 1 to add suspense and 2 unless we're mistaken, claw traps are applied to 3 scans which is on the hud.
- We wouldn't know where to begin in creating a training add on.
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Appreciate the feedback!
To tackle the last two points, which are the ones that seem the most constructive to talk about-- while the claw traps are only applied on 3 scans, what I'm talking about is when you're shown as a little white dot on her scanner, which is what gives her Haste. That happens for 12 seconds after every scan, not just the third one, and while people who know that can count it in their heads, I think a visual aid for people who don't know it would be useful. Both to help them learn how long it lasts without needing to look it up on the wiki, and also to maybe show some newer players not to hide because there's a big red symbol on their HUD.
That last part might be wishful thinking, but y'know.
For the last part, I gave an example! Show the beams in white for a few seconds after placing a drone, to give visual feedback on whether you've aimed it correctly. Mostly useful for learning how to "lasertag", as Pixel Bush calls it, but specific placements can be tricky in general so it'd be a nice little QoL effect.
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"Unhealthy" is an impossible to define term used as a catchall for "thing I don't like". It doesn't mean anything.
Would SM be unplayable after these nerfs? Of course not. She'd still be better than trapper. The salient question is whether a B tier killer needs nerfs because people just don't like her, for the sake of folks seeing her less. The answer is obviously no.
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Ahh we thought it was per claw trap. Fair enough reason, though we're kinda opposed on a principle level. Or to elaborate we're opposed to it being completely obvious to the survivor that they're being tracked. If its something to show survivors that they can be tracked and not currently being tracked, which is what we thought you meant, then we're more ok with such.
We saw you gave and example but (to us atleast) the beams seem kinda obvious to us. If you think such an add on would be useful by all means, but thats our two cents on the matter. Also whats "lasertag" (its been a long day for us, we're to tired to deep dive atm)
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"Unhealthy" is a word without an objective definition, but that doesn't make it impossible to define. For this purpose, I would consider anything that allows for subverting skill expression or interaction to be unhealthy; I like the skill expression of hiding drones to surprise survivors, but I think that getting to benefit from that crossmap with no further interaction or expression is unhealthy.
Granted, you still get a speed boost even with my proposed changes, but I think that's a fair tradeoff for the amount of effort you put in. If you want more than that, you should have to react and engage with that survivor.
For another example, I think showing survivors when SM can see them is healthy because it promotes actual gameplay reactions to her power. Skull Merchant doesn't get to blindside someone who didn't know she moves faster, the survivor doesn't get to actually avoid the fact that she moves faster, they both play around that fact.
You're welcome to disagree, but I'd ask you not to state or imply that my suggestions are just "for the sake of people seeing her less". I've given my reasons, and they aren't that.
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For lasertagging - it's when you set a drone down with the express intention of tagging someone straight in front of you with a Lock On stack.
The beam always starts facing directly forward from where you placed it, and it only takes less than a second to arm, so in some scenarios you can use it almost like Xeno's tail to quickly hit someone directly in front of you. It's hard because the margin for error is small, and because there's no visual feedback for how far off you were, making practising a little tough.
I don't think this hypothetical addon would be picked much, but it'd be nice to have it available for anyone who wants a little feedback on spacing and timing. Kinda like Nurse's training wheels addon- probably not picked that much, especially not among more skilled players, but it's nice that it's there.
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While I agree there needs to be a way to remove Lock On without surviving a claw trap, I don’t think tying it to drone hacking is the best way to do it since that would heavily discourage setting up drones outside of chase. If anything I feel like placing drones outside of chase should be encouraged more than just placing drones mid-chase. Placing drones mid-chase feels too easy and doesn’t have enough drawbacks since she isn’t slowed down at all for doing it unlike a lot of other killers with similar abilities (eg. Artist placing a crow) and drones initialize very quickly after being placed so survivors often don’t have any time to react to drone placement. I'm not saying she necessarily should get slowed down for it (that may feel too clunky at this point), but making drones take slightly longer to initialize after being placed may give survivors a little more counterplay.
As for lock-on removal, I think a better idea for it that wouldn't discourage setting up drones ahead of time would just be reverting it to a timer-based system like it was originally. For example, let’s go back to the old lock-on visual with the circular gauge on the survivor’s portrait (what used to take 10 seconds to fill up in active zones) but rework it a bit:
-Getting scanned once (or failing a drone hack) fills up the gauge by 40%. So after 3 scans it will be full and the survivor gets a claw trap/becomes broken.
-After getting scanned, lock on doesn’t regress for up to 30 seconds (this timer resets if scanned again).
-After that 30 seconds of not being scanned, lock on will regress at 1% per second. So if you get scanned once and then never again, lock on would be back to zero after 70 seconds. 2 scans would be fully removed after 110 seconds.
-Exact lock-on progress is now visible to the Skull Merchant at all times.
The numbers on this system could be tweaked but this is a starting point at least. Since there’s a 30 second delay on regression, you can still get a survivor claw trapped with 3 scans if you are actively chasing them. Making the per-scan amount 40% means you still need at least 3 scans to get a claw trap, but adds a bit more leeway for the Skull Merchant since you can lose up to 20% to regression without needing a 4th scan to make up for it.
As for her having a lot of status effects in her kit, the deep wound isn’t what bothers me at all. I feel it’s an appropriate penalty for getting a claw trap while already injured. What I think needs to go is her haste status. It’s too frequent and too easy to get for how strong haste is in general and it just doesn’t feel necessary anymore, it feels like the only reason it exists is because it’s a leftover from her old power. Furthermore if this is removed then it adds an additional reason why the deep wound should stay since otherwise without the haste it may become a good idea for injured survivors with 2 scans to just intentionally take a claw trap to get rid of their lock on faster, if they know the Skull Merchant is busy or won’t be interested in chasing them. So being forced to mend in that situation would add a necessary drawback to that strategy imo.
-Removed the Haste status effect from the Skull Merchant's basekit.
In return for removing haste and adding lock-on regression, I feel the following buffs would be appropriate:
-Tracking duration when being scanned without getting a claw trap is increased from 12 seconds to 15 seconds.
-Claw Trap battery life (and the associated Broken effect) is increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds.
-The Hindered effect on claw trapped survivors is increased from 10% to 12%. This is intended to partially make up for removing the haste effect, to make this less of a nerf when chasing a claw-trapped survivor and to keep claw traps rewarding for the killer.
I agree with your suggestions for making drone rotation more obvious to survivors when switching the direction and in regards to overlapping drones. Your suggestion for drone rotation was perfect imo:
-Drones now make a beep sound when their rotation direction is switched.
As for overlapping drones, the current drone radius is 10 meters and the minimum distance between 2 drones is 12 meters. I think this would work:
-Increased the minimum distance between 2 drones from 12m to 18m.
This doesn't eliminate drone overlapping entirely but makes it less common and significantly reduces the amount of drone area that can overlap, without restricting drone placement as much as the original Skull Merchant (old Skull Merchant had a 22 meter minimum distance between drones).
Regarding how long drones stay hacked: I agree the current 45 seconds is too short and doesn't feel impactful enough (hacking often feels like a waste of time as survivor), but I also feel your suggestion of 90 seconds may be too long. I would try something around 60-70 seconds.
Then finally a few adjustments for addons:
-High-Current Upgrade: Removing the haste from the basekit is a significant nerf to an already not very good addon, so it should be buffed to increase tracking duration by 3 seconds (was 1 second).
-Vital Targeting Processor: This is one of her best addons and the above changes make a large portion of it basekit, so I feel it should get a new effect. New effect: Increases the delay after being scanned before lock-on begins to regress by 20%.
-Expired Batteries: I don't have an idea for this addon right now but since the haste is gone from her basekit this addon needs a new effect.
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should it be possible to get claw traps outside of chase
yes
should it be easy? no
survivors need to screw it, or you need to place drone in unexpected angle. Your changes make this impossible.
There would be absolutely no reason to have drones around the map. You would be able to use them only for stealth (recall asap) and in chase. Which seems really boring to me.
I like those crazy drone placements
Well, there is no point in doing it when survivor can remove lock on by disarming. You don't even need to crouch to disarm them, you can just run towards them, take a lock on and then just remove it by disarm. Super brain dead.
that at least makes dropping chase after the claw trap worth it
How so? Only thing broken survivor can do is work on gen.
Dropping chase before getting the trap, even on live, is kind of a waste of your time
not if you have STBFL
If all you got was an injure and Deep Wound, there'd be almost no benefit to ever dropping chase
You already never drop the chase on survivor with claw trap, simply because you are one tag away from Hindered.
Issue is survivors who get injured outside of chase, which are mostly new players. Deep wound is just small slowdown for Skully, but it won't stop them from healing. New players are not good at playing injured, so broken is massive noob stomper for this.
For Skully broken doesn't mean that much, even if it would be deep wound, you still have information on that survivor with claw trap, so you would be able to get there in time to stop them from healing.
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My issue with this list of changes is that it kind of guts everything that makes Skull Merchant who she is, and also what makes her actually better than similar killers.
With your Lock On changes, she now can't build up stacks over time, instead of it being possible if survivors neglect to manage their new secondary objective. With my changes, she becomes a killer with a small amount of built-in slowdown; if you're somehow in a position where someone's running around with one or two stacks and you're not in chase with them (which shouldn't really be happening anyway, but real games are messy, fair enough), you can leverage one of two things. They're either ignoring those stacks, which you can capitalise on later for a shorter chase, or they're finding and hacking a drone, which keeps them off generators for a bit longer.
With your changes, she needs to commit way harder to every individual chase, which actually reduces the potency of setting drones up ahead of time. She has to get her scans in that chase, and any drone she set down earlier could be hacked, so she might as well keep them on hand to force stacks however she can mid-chase.
There's also drones taking longer to arm, which removes part of her skill ceiling in an attempt to fix something that isn't currently broken. Survivors only don't have time to react if the Skull Merchant hits them dead-on with the beam, something that takes good aim and good timing. Otherwise, the beam just starts rotating, and they absolutely have time to react to that.
Moving onto the removal of Haste, that just makes the drones completely non-threatening until the third stack onwards. There's absolutely zero incentive to play around the beams and dodge individual scans if they just don't do anything beyond let the Skull Merchant see you on her scanner, meaning that the entire mechanical depth of that minigame is - at best - cut down to a third of the importance it had before. In my opinion, that is Skull Merchant's identity as a killer, especially from the survivor side of things, and I am extremely opposed to it being removed. Dodging beams is the thing that sets her apart from other killers, and making that basically unnecessary for a majority of the match isn't a good direction to go in.
Which sort of brings me to the big overall complaint, which is... what exactly do her drones do after all these changes? She gets barely anything for individual scans, so she's now building towards a ranged injure and a worse Clown slow. The Broken would help set her apart from other killers in this regard, but she's still gone from a comparable jack of all trades to just being flat worse without much in the way of an identity or appeal.
She gets Hindered in chase, but it's worse than Clown's and takes far far longer to actually affect anyone.
She gets Broken on survivors, but it's on a timer, and it takes longer to build up than Plague's without any of the potential passive gain via infecting generators and other objects.
She gets stealth, but it's also on a timer, so she's not a good pick for a pure stealth killer either.
Right now, she has an edge over those other killers because of individual scans affecting the flow of a chase, and that effect pushing both parties to play around each beam as though it's individually important, because it is. This is both a purely mechanical advantage, and also an experiential one, because actually playing as and against her feels very different from playing as and against those other killers due to playing around individual beams.
(Hypothetically, anyway. I know survivors mostly give up against her, but we're talking about the overall idea rather than the grim reality.)
Sure, keeping the Deep Wound makes sense if we're cutting out much more important parts of her identity and making her worse in the process, but I don't agree with that direction, somewhat obviously. I don't mean to come down on you too hard here, I'm just chronically wordy and passionate, so it comes out this way sometimes.
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Sooo:
- impossible to get claw trap outside of chase
- lose haste
but she will be able to see how much little her drones do, nice...
She will be trash without the haste, absolutely nothing for chase. What about nerfing Hindered and buffing haste? I rarely get to Hindered anyway, so any buffs to it are useless.
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In order:
1: Of course it'd be possible, it would just require survivors to ignore their stacks. That doesn't change with my proposed adjustments to her power, that part remains the same, so it's just placing drones in unexpected angles. The thing about that one is that you see when they take that stack, which means bare minimum they're setting themselves up for a chase.
The part I think a lot of people miss is that hacking drones removing Lock On stacks only penalises setting drones down ahead of time if people are running around with Lock On stacks outside of chase. That isn't something that should actually happen, and if you do drop chase on someone with Lock On stacks, at least you know they're probably staying off generators to go find and hack a drone... which you know about, so they're not exactly safe in this scenario.
2: Of course there's a point to doing it: Chase survivors into it. Actually be there and capitalise on the fact that you surprised a survivor with an unexpected angle. Bare minimum, if they run to the drone and disarm it, they're spending time doing that instead of generators, but even so- they're traps, you should actually be there to act when they're sprung.
Also, if it happens multiple times, each hack is only one stack removed. It'd take time to get two gone, meaning you can ambush them for the third, especially if you are dropping chase on survivors with Lock On stacks for whatever reason.
3: They're injured, and you have stealth. Forcing them to not heal makes them vulnerable for later, or forces them to play much more cautiously, which slows down their efficiency.
4: I have no idea how STBFL would change this, but even if it does, that's one perk you may or may not have. I don't think it's super relevant to this conversation?
5: I agree that Broken is more effective against newer players, but I don't agree that this should mean we can't put it on a killer's basekit. That's a full half of Plague's identity, and while Plague doesn't have stealth by default it's hardly as though that makes a ton of difference against newer players and it's not as though she can't have stealth.
As for never dropping chase against claw trapped survivors, sure, you probably don't want to. With Broken, at least you know you could and have something to capitalise on later. The Mend action does not take that much time, it isn't all that useful for you and Merchant isn't really designed around it the way someone like Legion or Deathslinger would be. She has a lot more going for her and none of it requires Deep Wounds.
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Of course it'd be possible
Right now it's possible against survivors who just don't watch where they are running. Shouldn't happen often, but it does.
If they could remove lock on, it's possible to get claw trap outside of chase only against survivors who have no idea how Skully works, which is just pathetic waste of time.
Of course there's a point to doing it: Chase survivors into it
This also means you can use drones only on loops with no objective, because if you have it anywhere near gens, then it's just lock-on removal station. Well, some of best loops usually have gens around them, so it doesn't really work.
Chase survivors into it.
Decent survivors choose their pathing, your options to change it are limited as base speed killer.
That's a full half of Plague's identity
Why exactly she needs to have anything common with Plague? That's part we got after rework, so you can't even argue about some original identity.
The Mend action does not take that much time
mending + healing and you can see their location whole time. Better than just doing gens imo.
Deathslinger would be
Merchant is way better than Deathslinger for using Mending properly. She is quite good hit&run killer. He is far from it.
she has a lot more going for her and none of it requires Deep Wounds.
Same goes for Broken.... Deep wounds is needed so drones are not completely useless against injured survivors.
Broken is not needed for anything. You could easily make it so claw trap always make you injured in deep wound. That's it. There is no IF.
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1: And it'd be possible afterwards if survivors are careless. What it wouldn't be is guaranteed for any player that knows the right trap spots, and it probably shouldn't be. If Merchant actually got random free injures across the map, people's complaints about her being skill-less would be more accurate.
2: That's where drones go...? You put them between objectives and in key loops, that's where they go. They're not really doing much for you if you put them directly on a generator, they don't work like that anymore.
3: Zoning survivors (the default killer concept, not a power thing) is a skill. Trap killers need to be able to influence the direction of the chase to some degree, or cover their bases by picking multiple spots skilled survivors would want to run to place their traps in.
4: She doesn't. That was an example, not a direct comparison.
5: Marginally, and after that small amount of time, they're back on gens anyway but they're healthy. Them being on gens injured is better than them being on gens healthy, especially if you can see them the whole time either way.
6: A fair point, but Deathslinger is still designed around it more than she is, it's to make up for the fact that he has to invest time into every hit due to the reeling mechanic. Merchant doesn't need it to make up for anything, because of point seven here.
7: That's the thing, a drone does do something against an injured survivor, I said this in the post. Even setting aside Broken, it provides you with Hindered, making the down significantly easier. The Deep Wound honestly isn't doing anything, especially without Broken, that you wouldn't get anyway.
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If getting scanned outside of chase was always 100% avoidable and the survivor's fault, sure, but there is currently skill expression in her kit that allows for that not being the case. I don't want that taken away, so I want it to be something you have to actively capitalise on instead.
Getting scanned outside of chase is 100% avoidable in every single situation. There is only one situation where I ever scanned outside of chase. This is where there is a drone near gen and I am purposely not hacking the drone in order to reveal my position to skull merchant because I do not want skull merchant to gain surveillance on my generator.
In that particular case, I am purposely taking a risk to not disable drone with the risk that skull merchant might show up to my generator and push me off generator thereby setting the drone off where you are forced to walk through laser.
Every other case, Survivor can easily cheese every single drone using 3rd person camera. There is no skill-cap to placing drones vs organized SWF OR a compendent high mmr solo player.
Though, I don't think this change would encourage 3-genning at all, especially since SM can't really do that all that well anymore. What it'd encourage is committing to getting three scans in a chase, which isn't the worst thing in the world. Maybe add some kind of grace period where if they get a scan in chase they can't remove it for a while, or maybe they can't remove it while they're shown on SM's scanner, but that part feels like it might be over-complicated.
It would encourage me to 3 gen every game as skull merchant because split pressure would be unrewarding as every survivor might as well have 0 lock-on stacks entire trial. You might as well just reduce drone count from 6 ->1. The only way split lock-on stacking would be effective is if skull merchant places drones and guards them which is only possible in a 3 gen.
That's why I prefer a tell over a cooldown. I'd like both sides to be able to express their skill, and while you can keep track of a drone's rotation by looking at it constantly, I'd like to make that slightly easier to do. Most survivors don't bother even looking behind them in chase, so this won't affect too many players, and the players it does affect get a more dynamic back-and-forth.
Exactly, It won't affect 99% of survivor players but may affect chase times vs top 1%. Why would a killer need a nerf vs top 1% which is where most killer struggle against over 99%. Killer need to be more viable vs 1%, not less viable.
What it'd encourage is committing to getting three scans in a chase, which isn't the worst thing in the world.
I like being able to pick the correct chases and play my macro game effectively, Freedom is the spice of the game. While I am not opposed to killers having specific strengths in a particular strategy, I like being able to win in multiple ways without feeling that I am pigeon held in a particular gameplay style. Survivors controlling my power efficacy is large negative in fun factor.
These seem like you're agreeing with me? Those are good reasons to remove the Deep Wound.
Deep wound is strong for 3 gen play-styles because it makes healing take longer. Not dealing with dead hard is great. I would not be opposed towards removing deep wound. At the same time I don't have problems playing vs it as survivor.
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1: It isn't, though. I already laid out the scenarios where it isn't 100% avoidable from the survivor side. The main tell for a drone that can't be outright seen hovering in the air straight away is the ring that spawns on the ground, showing you the radius of the drone. If the drone is a little bit higher in elevation than everything around it, though, that ring attempts to project onto the air, and thus just isn't visible.
This makes some drone placements quite hard to reliably spot before you're in a position to be scanned by them. Again, this is a good thing overall, but because scans outside of chase should be 100% avoidable anyway, that means there should really be a way of removing the scans you get when the killer isn't on you to capitalise. If you've got an idea for that beyond tying it to hacking drones, of course, I'm open to hearing it.
2: You might feel encouraged, but again, I don't think that would actually be the more optimal way of playing her. It wouldn't actually be flat out encouraged, especially when Skull Merchant isn't considerably better than most other killers at doing that to begin with.
The question I always have here is, why are survivors walking around with a single Lock On stack outside of chase anyway? You'd have to have dropped chase on someone who you'd built up stacks on for that to happen, and in that case-- well, in that case you're already making the decision to commit to something else, most killers have to give up some power for that, but in Skull Merchant's case you at least get a mini-Pig slowdown effect from that survivor going out of their way to find and hack a drone. Two, if they have two stacks and want to reset to zero.
3: I think giving aware and competent players (on either side) more room to make informed decisions is generally a good thing unless the information is supposed to be hidden, like a stealth killer's whereabouts. You can already see this effect in motion, so I would argue you're supposed to be able to know that it's happening. Giving players another small indicator would only be a nice QoL effect.
4: Yeah, not sure what there is to really say to this one. That's nice? It's still healthier for survivors to have ways to remove Lock On if they either successfully evaded the killer, or the killer dropped chase on them. My pitch is something that the killer gets to benefit from too, so it's not just survivors being in control of your power's effectiveness-- and it isn't that at all, also, you would still be just as much in control as you are on live, there's just another layer of decisionmaking if you decide to break chase.
Survivors can already hack drones, which already actually mitigates your power's effectiveness for any drone you placed ahead of time. That concept may not always be strictly the most fun, but it is sometimes necessary.
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crouch walking beat every single possible drone location. The only question is knowing when to crouch walk vs when not to crouch walk. Frankly if you get scanned by a drone, you deserve to be punished, not given a near free second chance by disabling a drone.
You might feel encouraged, but again, I don't think that would actually be the more optimal way of playing her. It wouldn't actually be flat out encouraged, especially when Skull Merchant isn't considerably better than most other killers at doing that to begin with.
Skull merchant is still among best controlling tight 3 gens. It is single handy has made her one of the most despised killers. Your post is sugar coating the killer's capacities. That being said, I think the play-style is more what is disliked over the balance hence why d/c is still relatively common.
Skull Merchant's case you at least get a mini-Pig slowdown effect from that survivor going out of their way to find and hack a drone. Two, if they have two stacks and want to reset to zero.
slowdown effects that do not massively put the survivor in time deficiency are irrelevant. Pig is really only good game-delay power killer in the game. Everything else is moot towards a efficient team.
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...So you just crouch walk everywhere, the whole game, just in case there's a hidden drone you wouldn't see coming somewhere on the map? That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Additionally, losing one Lock On stack for a hack is not a second chance, it's a reward for employing counterplay.
To the 3-gen thing: People have said this, and I suppose it's possible I'm missing something, but I just don't see how. Her power isn't an AOE so gens can be done while ignoring it, and survivors will only get scanned when they leave generators, which also isn't guaranteed to happen. Is there something I'm missing here?
To the last point: That's pretty obviously wrong, slowdown effects that don't put survivors at a massive time deficit are just a regular part of good killer gameplay. Anything that adds to the basekit amounts of slowdown the killer can generate is obviously pretty good, considering that basekit slowdown is usually enough if you're skilled, and Pig + Merchant aren't the only two in the game who have it.
Solving the Lament Configuration, setting down flamethrower traps, grabbing EMPs, finding vaccine/first aid spray chests + opening them + using the item, these small timesinks all add up when combined with regular old pressure the killer's building.
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...So you just crouch walk everywhere, the whole game, just in case there's a hidden drone you wouldn't see coming somewhere on the map? That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Additionally, losing one Lock On stack for a hack is not a second chance, it's a reward for employing counterplay.
No. One of the skills required to defeat skull merchant is knowing when to crouch.
To the 3-gen thing: People have said this, and I suppose it's possible I'm missing something, but I just don't see how. Her power isn't an AOE so gens can be done while ignoring it, and survivors will only get scanned when they leave generators, which also isn't guaranteed to happen. Is there something I'm missing here?
The strength of skull merchant has always been the added risk of doing a generator in regards to 3 genning. The fact that drones do not detect you on gen is meaningless change in regard to a skull merchant that 3 gens from the start. That change punishes killer players that DO NOT 3 gen from the start. This makes killer 3 gen more because leaving their 3 gen becomes a risk
The gameplay that i describe in my post where I talk about purposely not hacking the drone then leaving a generator is where the strength of her 3 gen comes from. You leave the gen, you run into drone, you get 1 stack of lock-on. She leaves you alone. Pressures another gen, Survivor runs into drone, repeat x3 until survivor get claw trapped. Your encouraging this type of gameplay from skull merchant in order to use her lock-on system. Skull merchants that do not look for 3 gens and use her stealth to pressure the map are punished for leaving drones around the map because survivors acquire easy outlets to remove all lock-on stacks.
Solving the Lament Configuration, setting down flamethrower traps, grabbing EMPs, finding vaccine/first aid spray chests + opening them + using the item, these small timesinks all add up when combined with regular old pressure the killer's building.
Overrated mechanics that are at best minor inconvenience towards an experience team. Wesker First aid spray is probably strongest of the bunch however the mechanic got a sizable nerf because survivors can now hold the killer item and regular item. At best, it is mild corrupt intervention at the start of the game. Off-topic.
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You do have a point about the first 2 scans not really being a threat in chase if the haste is gone, you’re right.
I just feel like the haste is a little too much for something that is passively obtained and for how often it’s active. Maybe it could be reduced a little instead of removing it entirely. The reason I wanted it to change doesn’t actually have anything to do with her having a bunch of status effects in her kit, I know that gets brought up sometimes but that by itself is not actually a good reason to change it.
No worries btw, I didn’t take your comment as being harsh or anything. I can be wordy sometimes too so I get it.
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I actually posted something pretty similar. Though I do want her hindered effect gone in placed of getting her old claw traps back. This was something unique and interesting to SM.
A lot of the same points I tackle in my own thread, but to quickly address your points:
- Agreed - Though you need a mechanic to mitigate people juat running up and eating a scan, and immediately removing the stack they got. Survivors should always be trying to dodge beams.
- Fine, no complaints.
- Also Fine.
- I would opt to remove hindered and add deep wound as the penalty for getting scanned again, along with her old pallet break for a recently scanned survivor.
- I'm fine with this, though I would be more ring favour of a movement penalty recalling a hacked drone and have it take 2 seconds. Make the choice to grab it back meaningful. The fact you can remove a stack hacking a drone is plenty incentive to ha k a drone.
- I totally agree with this. I had the same idea.
- Fine no issues.
I also think SM needs her speed I'm chase relating to the survivor she's chasing, not some random goober stepping in a trap across map. The survivor in chase shouldn't be punished for something another teammate does unchallenged.
If you're interested here is my version:
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1: I've laid out a few times when the survivor wouldn't know, because the information they'd be using to gauge when to crouch would be hidden. Are you going to acknowledge that at all?
2: Okay, so, setting aside whether that actually works on live - though I don't see how that's any better than the killers who don't need to build stacks to begin with - my changes definitely don't encourage it.
Let's look at that scenario again, but assume my changes are in place. Survivors A and B are both working on a generator with a drone nearby, both sitting at zero stacks because the drone won't detect them while they're repairing. Skull Merchant approaches Survivor A, and chases them away from the generator, causing them to get a stack of Lock On in the process. She now leaves to go pressure Survivor B.
What happens next is that Survivor A returns to their generator, hacks the drone to remove their Lock On, and keeps repairing. Now, when Skull Merchant returns to harass them again, she has to replace the drone, meaning Survivor A gets to remain at zero stacks while running away-- and all the while, Survivor B is hacking their drone to remove their one stack.
These changes actually further weaken Skull Merchant's 3-gen capabilities. The way you'd end up playing to utilise Lock On most effectively is... exactly how you'd play her well now. Get the stacks in chase, and use smart drone placement ahead of time + good aim and prediction for lasertagging to make that as quick as possible. Encouraging the most skilful and most interaction-based gameplay is good, I'm sure you'll agree, and that's what this looks like.
3: You're falling into the recursive logic fallacy I like to call "no good survivors", here. The loop goes as follows: "That won't work against good survivors" -> "How are good survivors defined?" -> "The survivors that won't work against".
If that's the case, sure! All those mechanics are worthless against good survivors. You're not facing good survivors in this case, though, because those mechanics all provide small amounts of slowdown that build up in tandem with the pressure you build naturally, just like I said. Maybe there's a 1% of the playerbase who get to ignore it, somehow, but statistically facing those seems unlikely.
It's also not off topic, because it's the supporting evidence to my argument...?
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I don't personally think the Haste she gets just for one scanned survivor is all that much. It's definitely very, very noticeable when you start building up more than one, but how often does that even happen, realistically?
It's also definitely not passive, and I think that's where a lot of the arguments against Merchant are based, in this idea that she does just get to push a button and get Haste or that her drones passively cover an entire loop. The survivors need to be scanned in order for the bonuses to happen, and while that's strictly passive, it's not meaningfully so because the survivors have every opportunity to not run into the beams if the Merchant isn't doing anything to force it.
For her active effort with placement, timing, and zoning, she gets a moderate speed boost for twelve seconds. Personally, I think that's fair.
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I did see your post halfway through making my own, and there's definitely some good stuff in there- it's where I got the idea for the Lock On turning red when you're scanned, that's a pretty genius idea! There are a few base assumptions that I disagree with in it, though, and I think I'll respond to points four and five here to get to some of my issues.
1: So, removing Hindered and giving her back pallet break. While I agree that her pallet break was a really neat and interesting part of her old kit, as I explained above in a response to someone else, I think that currently the best feature Skull Merchant has is the idea that single beams actually matter, and so everyone is trying to play around them. Survivors dodging them, killer trying to force them to run into it anyway, that's interactive gameplay and I think preserving that as her core identity is a good idea.
Without the Hindered, being scanned with a Claw Trap on isn't too threatening, especially when you're already Deep Wounded. However, I do have a bit of a compromise in mind: Currently, her Expired Batteries iridescent addon is kind of worthless, so maybe that could be what we have it do? Claw Traps no longer provide Hindered when scanned, but instead allow pallets to be broken when vaulted while they're active. Since it's an iridescent, we can keep them not breaking when that happens to make it a bit scarier.
2: I don't think this would be a bad thing necessarily, but I'm also of the opinion that cooldowns and slowdowns should both be considered very carefully. It's worth mentioning that old old Skull Merchant, the PTB version, had both of these features and it's part of what made her feel so awful and clunky. I'm somewhat hesitant to put them back, but this one in particular might be somewhat workable.
3: I'll also tackle the idea of SM's speed being based on just the survivor she's chasing- I get why this is frustrating, but it's only really being examined in SM's case because of how scrutinised she is in general. I would argue that it's far more frustrating for a teammate to feed Myers a ton of Stalk or Oni a ton of his blood, or for a teammate to waste all the Xeno turrets putting them in stupid places. These all impact your chase far far more than someone tripping a drone and giving her a little Haste, and they're all also basically fine imo.
It is a team game. At some point, your teammate's mistakes are going to affect you.
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Post edited by XenRedspike on1
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I've already acknowledged that Skull Merchant's hate is irrational and that these changes aren't in any way related to the way most of the playerbase talks about her, it's in the post.
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And it'd be possible afterwards if survivors are careless
It would be possible only if you drop chase with survivor having 2 stacks, then he needs to not look around and run into your drone. Otherwise it simply won't be possible to get claw trap outside of chase.
Everytime survivor runs into a claw trap, they can disarm it, which would mean removing that stack they already got. They don't need to look for it.
I can run into 5 drones on my search for hex totem and I will have 0 lock on, because everytime I can just run directly to it without crouching, because I have immunity after tag and disarm the drone -> back to 0.
Dropping chase before getting the trap, even on live, is kind of a waste of your time
and as you said, dropping chase with 2 stacks left is waste of time, so that's not an option....
You said you like creative drone placements, then why make it invalid and pointless? If I chase survivor into it, I don't need creative spots, just drop it into middle of the loop is good enough.
drone does do something against an injured survivor
That's what it does against survivor with claw trap, not as effect of placing the drone.
I don't really get why are you so attached to broken. You changes would make it simply impossible to get claw trap outside of chase, so that's useless there and you are not going to drop chase on survivor with clawtrap, so broken is also useless there. Unless you play every game against insta-heal, which I doubt.
Mending at least makes harder to see for survivors, so it kinda helps in chase and survivors can't just stand for infinite amount of time, so in chase Mending -> Broken.
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I don't think I should keep just repeating myself, so I'll say these about one more time and then I think we'll just have to go our separate ways:
You shouldn't be getting random claw traps on survivors outside of chase, unless they're massively messing up and completely ignoring drones. That isn't something that'd be fair if it were reliable, you should have to put some kind of effort into getting claw traps onto survivors. It's possible, but as a hypothetical, like a head-pop on Pig: it's not meant to actually happen, it's meant to be a possibility that pushes players to act.
There's still a point to creative and hidden drone placements, which is that survivors will run more blindly into them in chase. Hiding traps is better than putting traps right in the middle of the loop where the survivor can see them from a mile away no matter which trap killer you're playing. Survivors have eyes, if the drone is obvious they'll be doing their best to avoid it. Plus, y'know, hitting survivors with random scans outside of chasing them is still good for you because it's information and Haste? It doesn't have to convert to a claw trap to be useful, you get those two things even if the drone is hacked straight away and the Lock On is removed.
Survivors being able to find and hack drones to clear Lock On is good, because it's a time investment away from generators and because it pushes the killer player to be less passive. This is due to it being less likely to win a war of attrition by relying on single scans at cheap loops, meaning you have to actually try. You, as a killer, can also deny them that possibility with your drone placements and with recalling, depending on how you want to play.
Broken is better than Deep Wound because it allows you to drop chase on a claw trapped survivor and have that actually matter. Deep Wound is a small time investment and makes a tiny difference in chase, sure, but Broken is both more powerful and more coherent with what she does. Getting scanned exposes your location, makes you vulnerable, and makes her more deadly. If you're claw trapped and Broken, you're at the mercy of a killer who knows where you are and can hide her terror radius. If you're claw trapped and just have Deep Wound, you can heal up safely and being claw trapped barely matters.
You still won't want to drop chase on claw trapped survivors either way, but with Broken, you can if it'd make sense and you'd be getting something out of doing so. With Deep Wound, you get next to nothing and dropping chase is something you cannot capitalise on later.
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they're massively messing up
How is running into 5 drones not massively messing up? You already need to massively mess up to get claw trap without ever being in chase...
It's possible
It wouldn't be if disarm removes lock on, as I said...
which is that survivors will run more blindly into them in chase
There is no need for it, I can just put claw trap in middle of the loop, most of them have walls around, so drones are not visible until you get close. There is 0 reason to even try being creative with drones.
Survivors being able to find and hack drones to clear Lock On is good,
That's the thing, they don't need to try, they don't need to avoid. It's not really slowdown when survivors don't need to pay attention that much.
Broken is better than Deep Wound because it allows you to drop chase on a claw trapped survivor
Why would you drop the chase against survivor with Claw trap? Have you actually ever done it? That's 1 tag away from Hindered, which is going to end the chase on most loops.
Only thing that survivor can do is work on gen when broken, with meding only thing survivor can do is mend and possibly heal. If you expect to return in stealth, then it doesn't really matter, if you return to survivor working on gen, or healing...
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Responding to entire sentences might help you here, instead of just fragments.
For instance, the full sentence for that second point is this: "It's possible, but as a hypothetical, like a head-pop on Pig: it's not meant to actually happen, it's meant to be a possibility that pushes players to act."
Taking the entire sentence into account, we can see that when I say it's possible, I do not mean that you'll actually get to rely on it happening in a real match. When survivors go hack drones, yes, they won't be claw trapped outside of chase. This is what we want, because it's forcing survivors into certain actions, and they wouldn't be forced if the possibility weren't there. As I say, it is a hypothetical, not a guarantee.
What we don't want is for survivors to end up getting claw trapped outside of chase because they messed up once after the Skull Merchant kept passively hitting them with one or two scans and dropping chase, for whatever reason. What we don't want is for the thing people say about Skull Merchant - that she takes no skill because everything she does is passive value for hitting a button - to actually be true.
It isn't true, currently, because there are plenty of elements of her kit that take skill and aren't passive. Those are the things we should emphasise, and the passive, cheesy, war-of-attrition stuff needs to be de-emphasised. Ergo, survivors need a way to clear Lock On stacks. I think this being tied to hacking drones is a good idea, but if there's some other good idea out there I'm open to hearing it.
If survivors do blindly stumble into a drone because they weren't paying attention, yes, they should get to clear that Lock On stack. They've already given the killer information and Haste-- if the killer wants anything more than that, they should have to try. They should have to actually put some kind of effort, skill, and gameplay into capitalising on the survivor's mistake, instead of getting given it for free. That's already how you play Skull Merchant well, so losing this would be completely immaterial, it shouldn't affect you.
Remember, also, that survivors getting scanned outside of chase shouldn't happen. They can see drones both in the air and in the ring projected onto the ground. So, if we give lesser skilled players a helping hand to make sure they aren't getting scans built up outside of chase if they react to the drone they missed (or more skilled players a hand when they couldn't see the drone's ring, if the placement is good), that means we can adjust Skull Merchant on the assumption that scans only accumulate in chase, which means that hypothetically she can be buffed in that area if she needs it. You can't make scans or claw traps too punishing if they can build up randomly across the map without any input from the killer.
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1: I've laid out a few times when the survivor wouldn't know, because the information they'd be using to gauge when to crouch would be hidden. Are you going to acknowledge that at all?
A drone that is in the middle is visible to the survivor regardless of stealth mode. These drones are not invisible like Wraith's cloaking. If you think there is a drone around the corner then you can crouch.
To your point, removing lock-on stacks makes placing drones in obscure place irrelevant because regardless of what the outcome is for survivor playing, they will not be punished as they can conveniently remove lock-on's.
What happens next is that Survivor A returns to their generator, hacks the drone to remove their Lock On, and keeps repairing. Now, when Skull Merchant returns to harass them again, she has to replace the drone, meaning Survivor A gets to remain at zero stacks while running away-- and all the while, Survivor B is hacking their drone to remove their one stack.
The gameplay becomes more about interrupting survivors from hacking drones. when a survivor is interrupted, they get a lock-on stack for failing to hack the drone. encourage lesser fun gameplay style for the opportunity to get split lock-on pressure is ill advised. I rather be able to move around the map and individual pressure survivors. your change is creating flowchart gameplay.
The way you'd end up playing to utilise Lock On most effectively is... exactly how you'd play her well now. Get the stacks in chase, and use smart drone placement ahead of time + good aim and prediction for lasertagging to make that as quick as possible.
my play-style doesn't involve brute force lock-on. I vaguely chase survivors to put lock-on stacks than setup drones in attempts that a survivor walks into drones and becomes injured and broken when they have 2/3 lock-on stacks. After that, I use my stealth to get an instant down. It is something like a bounty hunter play-style. I don't really use hindered mechanic all that much. The main time I use hindered mechanic is when a survivor is on death hook and I am tunneling the survivor off death hook. For me, the killer is something like hit & run trapper that sometimes tunnels optimistically. The lock-on stacks and stealth addition to the kit made skull merchant amusing to play.
your changes make her into a boring 3 gen killer with clown that has setup time with traps in the chase if they commit to the 1vs1.
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1: The key word there is think, because you wouldn't be able to tell just by keeping an eye out. Ergo, you would have to crouch walk around every corner just in case, because that is the only way to check if there's a drone in one of these spots. Because the ring on the floor that indicates where they are, the thing you're keeping an eye out for, is hidden. If there's nothing to actually use to gain that information, it's not skill, it's guesswork.
Smart placement would still make them better traps. That hasn't changed. They just won't build up Lock On stacks passively around the map without any interaction from the killer, and that's good.
2: This is getting kind of absurd at this point, surely? All these extra steps and conditions on a playstyle that already took major hits between her rework and the anti 3-gen system, just to get a worse Clown power and Broken on those survivors, and somehow after these extra steps and conditions are added it encourages this playstyle?
No, it just doesn't make it 100% impossible. Anyone who wants to do something other than 3-genning would have absolutely zero incentive to do it, and anyone who DOES want to 3-gen is going to pursue it regardless, even with my hypothetical changes making it awkward and finicky.
She'd probably still do well in a 3-gen, of course! Almost every killer does if their goal is to actually win the game, since it's inherently a tight area that shrinks the map considerably. There'd just be very little in her kit to encourage it.
3: What I am describing is not brute force, it is the literal opposite. It would be finesse in using the drones actively, rather than relying on them building passively with little effort. I don't want Skull Merchant to win wars of attrition where she never commits to a chase until the Lock On builds enough to make it very quick, I want her to actually have to use and play around her drones in the smart and skilful way.
Or, y'know, anything else. I don't much care to dictate playstyle, I just want to take passive value out of her kit for the most part. She gets stealth without commitment, and sometimes she'll get info + Haste without commitment when survivors trip drones accidentally, everything else would need to be something you're actively trying to capitalise on.
Also, I really cannot stress this enough, this hypothetical would only kick in if survivors hack drones, meaning you could recall drones to deny them that option if you really wanted to pursue this kind of option. I wouldn't mind that gameplan if you had to think about where your drones are and which ones would be at most risk of getting hacked + by which survivors.
As an aside, you are harming your argument extensively by highlighting that anything in her design or gameplan involves tunnelling by default. We want to minimise and weaken tunnelling, not create killers who excel at it. I don't even think Skull Merchant does since survivors come off the hook without any Lock On stacks, but still, if the gameplay you want to highlight as her core identity involves tunnelling, you're making an extremely hard sell.
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Or, y'know, anything else. I don't much care to dictate playstyle, I just want to take passive value out of her kit for the most part.
The passive is integral part of her kit. Although you are unlikely to put more then 2 claw traps at one time, the speed bonus scales with number of arm claw traps present on the map. The building of passive stacks allows skull merchant to have multiple claws in certain instances. It is still on survivor to make mistakes in regards to drones.
I don't want Skull Merchant to win wars of attrition where she never commits to a chase until the Lock On builds enough to make it very quick, I want her to actually have to use and play around her drones in the smart and skilful way.
gaining stacks is skull merchant using her drones tactically. Your suggesting skull merchant to brute force her ability alongside removing the finesse of her ability.
If there's nothing to actually use to gain that information, it's not skill, it's guesswork.
I am curious for how you approach playing against Hag traps? Hag traps are a small sigil on the floor which in many instances are difficult to spot. Do you crouch the entire map vs hag? You do not need to see the outline to identify drones. they are visible out in the open. A small amount of using 3rd person camera and crouch walking can counter the less visible drones.
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1: The speed bonus stacks for every survivor that is shown on your scanner, not just for claw traps. Either way, though, at no stage have I suggested making it impossible for multiple claw traps to be attached to survivors, I've just stated that it shouldn't happen randomly, for free, with no input on the killer's part.
This is where I'll point out again that if it's tied to hacking drones, you can deny survivors the ability to do it. If you want to split pressure on your Lock On stacks, you just need to make sure there are fewer drones out than there are scans to remove. Hell, if you're quick enough on the draw you can recall a drone immediately after a survivor trips it and deny them the chance to remove that stack.
2: No, actually using her drones and playing around them is the skilful way of doing it. If anything is brute force, it's forcing single scans and relying on random mistakes to win a war of attrition.
There's a lot of skill that goes into using her drones properly, they aren't just fire and forget.
3: So this is more of a fair point and I'll try to be as specific as I can in responding to it, because I do have an answer.
Hag's Phantasm Traps (and also Trapper's Bear Traps, for that matter) are different here for two major reasons. The first is that they're much smaller- not in terms of physical model size, but in terms of effective range. You have to step on them (or at least very very close for Hag) before they activate.
The second is that they have a logic to where they'd go, unlike the spots we're talking about for Skull Merchant that are highly specific and would require flat out memorisation to counter on the survivor side.
Those two things combined mean that you don't actually have to crouch walk everywhere, you can just take a wider path around the areas that traps would go in. This wouldn't work against Skull Merchant's drones because they have a pretty hefty radius, especially compared to a Phantasm Trap.
It's also worth mentioning that a Hag's traps don't do anything unless she decides to act on it. You don't trip a Phantasm Trap, build up a stack of something, and eventually get injured without the Hag ever having to even look in your direction while you're doing it. Similarly, if you trip a drone and Skull Merchant comes to chase you, that then matters because you don't have time to remove the stack. It's about whether the killer actually has to do something to capitalise on the trap triggering, and Hag does. Right now, Skull Merchant kind of doesn't, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it overpowered. Just an unhealthy element that should be scaled back so there's more skill involved.
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Letting survivors remove lock on on disarm is massive nerf that basically removes her 1v4 element and it's just stealth / weak 1v1.
You compare it with pig traps. Those are "traps" just by name and their slowdown is completely different level compare to drones.
I have no idea what went through your head, when you thought there is need for more nerfs on top of this massive nerf, which makes it brainless for survivors in my opinion.
Also quite important topic, if they would ever go for something like this, don't forget full addon pass. Most of her addons are around clawtrap, which is useless, if you completely remove even a chance to get claw trap outside of chase. Those addons are already quite bad, but they would be nemesis level trash with your change.
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Something I've neglected to really elaborate on, and that is my fault, I'll cop to it, is that getting claw traps out of chase would be something the killer can make happen. I've been hitting the point that it shouldn't happen randomly and without input from the killer, and I stand by that, but we should of course acknowledge that the Skull Merchant would have some control over it.
Remember, with my hypothetical changes, survivors would have to hack drones to remove a single stack of Lock On. So, if they're sitting at two stacks, but there's only one drone on the map and it's nowhere near them... they're just sitting at two stacks, permanently. That might seem like an extreme example, but consider a more plausible one: Three survivors are sitting at two stacks, and the fourth is in chase, but there are three drones out. Not everyone can hack twice, there aren't enough drones, so those stacks are going to stay-- and if any of those traps are hidden ones, trying to find something to hack might result in an unexpected claw trap instead.
If the killer is actively paying attention to Lock On stacks, keeping track of their drone locations, and making sure to recall drones that look too easy to get to and hack, they'd still stand a reasonable chance of getting claw traps outside of chase-- at the very least, they'd be able to keep survivors close to being claw trapped for their next chase.
They'd just have to try. It wouldn't be passive, there'd be room for messing it up, and there'd be room to counter it. That is all necessary for a balanced and fair power.
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So, if they're sitting at two stacks
This doesn't work with your other comment:
Dropping chase before getting the trap, even on live, is kind of a waste of your time
Tell me exactly how survivor gets two lock on in any other way than skull merchant leaving him with lock on stacks -> which would be bad idea, when they can remove them.
Every time survivor on their own runs into drone, they are free to remove that lock on. So survivors outside of chase will never get above 1 stack.
Three survivors are sitting at two stacks
How the hell this situation would even happen?
Btw skull merchant can't recall drone when survivor started disarm, so you can't really even try to deny it when survivor get tagged.
At one point you say dropping a chase before claw trap is waste time and on other hand you say broken is needed, so you have option to drop a chase. Where at point of broken survivor, you overcommited a lot for this, so you need to get that down. Leaving survivor with 1/2 stacks probably didn't take much time.
This whole comment you just made only works if you keep leaving chase against survivors with lock on, which is waste of time as you said...
I don't believe Skull merchant is in state for direct nerfs. There is definetly room for changes, so she is not a massive noob stomper, but your idea is basically 6 nerfs and some of them are massive. She is already weaker and easier to play against comapre to her previous versions. You are just trying to create Freddy 2.0
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Alright, I'll pull back a bit to try and explain what we're talking about here.
The major point I've been trying to get across, something that we might've lost sight of when dissecting very specific sentence fragments outside of their context, is that Skull Merchant shouldn't get given the whole value of her power without having to try. So when I say that survivors shouldn't be running around with single Lock On stacks, there's an asterisk.
That asterisk reads: Unless the killer is employing some kind of strategy revolving around leaving survivors with single stacks. On live servers, it'd be to win a war of attrition by getting them to two stacks and having a really short chase afterwards, which I think is rather unhealthy and passive, and I'd prefer to see that made harder so playing her more skilfully and actively is encouraged more.
With my changes, you'd still be able to do it, you'd just need to juggle drone placements and try to deny hacks wherever you can. This could just be not leaving drones out for too long, or it could be hiding them and trying to react to the survivor tripping it so you can recall the drone just before the hack starts. It'd still be doable, but it wouldn't be passive anymore, you'd actually be putting in active effort.
To make it even more simple, I'll lay it out like this:
If a survivor trips a drone outside of chase, here is what you should get: Information on your scanner, and twelve seconds of Haste.
If you want more than that, you should have to actually chase that survivor. If you want a claw trap on them, you should have to chase them. If you want to try and build them to that point without chasing them, you should have to pay some kind of attention and exercise some kind of skill and effort.
What you shouldn't be able to get is random free injuries on the other side of the map, because you played sloppily and had to drop chase a lot but stacks can't be removed so they still end up claw trapped from one unexpected drone.
Getting full value from skill expression, trap management, and chase fundamentals: Good.
Getting full value from sloppy passive play that requires little effort: Bad.
Getting small value from survivor mistakes: Acceptable, but it shouldn't match what you get by actually trying.
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You can't seem to decide how it works...
So far you are fine with it being impassible to get claw trap outside of chase, based on giving up completely on your idea of three survivors with 2 stacks, because even you have to realize it's impossible. So I think you got back on it.
Ok, so should be impossible to get claw trap outside of chase, we can work with that. Just don't try to act like it's possible to do with your skill, because it simply wouldn't be.
Can we at least aggree that this is massive nerf?
Why remove mending? You make it harder to get claw trap and effect is also worse? Shouldn't we buff claw traps when it's so hard to get them on survivors with your change? It doesn't make any sense.
And there would need to be addon pass and just rework most addons that works on claw traps only, because those would be useless.
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What I just laid out is how it should work.
I am fine with it being functionally impossible to get random claw traps outside of chase. I haven't given up on the idea of multiple survivors having multiple stacks, because I laid out that I don't mind the killer trying to spread those stacks IF they have to manage their drones and avoid as many hacks as possible while doing it.
My problem with the current scenarios where multiple survivors have multiple scans is that there's no effort or skill involved on the killer's side. It's a war of attrition that, if they win it, won't have required much from the killer. I don't think this currently a huge must-fix-immediately problem, since the killer's also fairly likely to lose the war of attrition, but it's still an unhealthy element that should be fixed.
So, yes, with skill and effort, you could get traps outside of chase. You'd just have to pay attention and be smart with your drone placements + recalls. It'd be harder than focusing on getting a trap on one person, which it should be because you're doing it to multiple survivors at once and trying to avoid needing to focus on them, but it would be doable.
So, no, we don't agree that it's a massive nerf. It's a noticeable one if you're the kind of player that does try and rely on stacks being permanent to drop chase frequently, but if you use her drones more actively you'll barely notice it at all and if you just put more effort into spreading stacks you'll be able to overcome it. That breaks out to a moderate nerf at worst.
I want to remove Mending because I don't feel that it does much of value, isn't particularly coherent with the rest of her kit, and probably contributes to the feeling of her kit being bloated with too many status effects. I'd rather keep the ones that make sense and help her, while removing the single one that doesn't really add much.
As for the addons: I was going to go and count how many claw trap addons she actually has, but apparently the wiki is broken and specifically won't show addon lists at the moment? That's really inconvenient, goddamnit.
Anyway, there aren't that many and if we discount the ones that obviously won't change (specifically, the aura reveal on claw traps being applied and on them being broken), most of them aren't even that good to begin with. I'd welcome changing those to something more useful, but it'd be inaccurate to claim these changes would really affect them much. The ones that are bad now will be bad afterwards, and the ones that are decent now will be decent afterwards.
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I just don't think you actually play skull merchant with your takes, or I have no idea how are you playing.
Feel free to show your gameplay how you skillfully manages your drones and spread lock on... Also drop a chase on broken survivor.
Your changes would make her terrible. Simple as that.
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